“My arm is still hot and hurting now. My arm can sometimes go numb like when you have been injected with a needle. My arm went completely red and my lips swelled up.”

Around two hours before the incident, Charley said she felt something tickling her neck. However, it was not until she began preparing her dinner that she spotted the spider on her shoulder and it fell down her top, causing her to go ‘hysterical’.

To remove the top Charley would have had to have lifted it over her head, which she did not want to do, so her mum Trisha was forced to cut her out of it.

Mrs Porter, also of Rife Way, Ferring, said: “If someone is phobic about something imagine how awful that is. We want to let people know because it’s a potentially lethal situation. If you could imagine a baby or elderly person, they could be in danger.

”The bites were really horrendous and blistery. It was like something out of a horror film. It was absolutely ghastly.”

Two ambulances attended the house once Charley was freed from her nighty at around 7.45pm.

She was placed on an electrocardiogram (ECG) which found her to have an irregular heartbeat. Paramedics took her to Worthing Hospital where she was placed on a drip and given antihistamines and antibiotics. She was released at around 11.30pm.

The Porters are going to have their house fumigated after a spider expert said there could be a nest in Charley’s room.

According to the expert, the warmth from the boiler in the room, combined with black walls, could have attracted the spiders in from the cold.

Mrs Porter was full of praise for the ambulance service and staff at Worthing Hospital.

The incident comes just weeks after a Worthing woman was left with a badly blistered hand from a false widow bite.

Originally from the Canary Islands and Madeira, the spider boasts a distinctive appearance, with cream-coloured markings said to resemble a skull.

In England, the spider is mostly found in the southern counties.

Charley is not the first to be affected by a false widow bite in Worthing.